The Future of China and Humankind - Essay Example

The Future of China and Humankind Outline This essay is striving to explain how China as a nation has become a significant player in the world’s economic development. It goes on further and describes how China suffered economically during the previous six centuries mainly because of the ideologies and mindsets of its past leaders attributed to their political ignorance. It also strives to explain how it is possible to transform a nation through its people by illustrating with examples on heroes such as Sun Yatsen and Nanyang whom decided to rise past humiliations to enlighten their country China and propel it to prosperity by plotting a revolution that was pretty successful and which is also being regarded as the pillar of Chinese civilization and economic prosperity. Body China has been contributing immensely to the world’s economic development since time immemorial and today it is being considered as the most aggressive economy. China has a rich history of technological innovations tracing back as early as the sixteenth century when it was the first to associate with gunpowder which today is being misused and mismanaged. They are also the inventors of paper and printing solutions that are being attributed to information revolution. Thereafter there is the reformation, renaissance, commercial, scientific and technological revolutions that followed and the Chinese are always considered as the master inventor by other foreign nations. The Chinese are also associated with rudder and compass system which have been quite popular in ocean voyages. However during the past 3-4 centuries, the Chinese did not significantly benefit from their innovations because of their ultra-nationalistic mindset and humiliation from the West. With China still suffering from their primitive culture that was coupled with imperialism and neo-colonist, the British easily adapted into the Chinese civil service examination enabling European elite transformations while China on the other hand remained unchanged. This clearly asserts that China even though had the resources to embrace the much needed civilization they could not because of their traditional mindset. During the period 1842-1949 the British waged the Opium war against China and deliberately forcing the Chinese to sign the humiliating treaty of Nanjing in 1842, this involved approximately 1000 unequal treaties that were being imposed on china between 1842-1949 which made Britons above Chinese Laws. These treaties also contained hidden clauses which favored western nations against China and they attempted to make China a sub colony of numerous colonial masters in which China was also forced to grant amnesty for its traitors that eventually made the country open to infiltration. These Humiliations continued for some period of time and it was until towards the end of the eighteenth century when Sun Yatsen a quite unknown figure emerged. Sun Yatsen is a Chinese native who was educated in overseas British schools, he rose above this humiliation by absorbing only the best culture from Britons and the Chinese. When he was abroad and when Chinese decided to destroy Confucianism, he emphasized on civilization and it was way until the First World War when he managed to conceive a strategy geared towards “International development of China” and the strategy was mandated to realizing Chinese Sages. This Strategy was later on adopted in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping and it worked by synchronizing Chinese strength with Western mindset. It is on the basis of this strategy devised and improved by these young men that has been attributed to the rise of China as one of the world’s most robust economies courtesy of the 1911 revolution. This civilization has in return branded China and elevated Sun Yatsen and Nanyang as historical role models due to the fact that they rose past humiliation and ultra-nationalistic. These heroes are widely acclaimed in international conferences, journals, reputable historic books and their historic status has made them comparable to exemplary leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Simon Bolivar of Latin America. It is believed that these two personalities are the ones who propelled China into adapting western ideologies. It can therefore be argued that Sun Yatsen as a historical figure has played a key role towards Chinese civilization. This makes the daunting task of treating such a celebrity overwhelming and historians have been forced to recognize his heroic abilities because they have to solve three fundamental problems; they have to pinpoint the exact circumstances that made him overthrow the government of the day in 1911, they also have to identify the factors that propelled him to synthesize his three principles and finally they have to separate the historical Sun Yatsen from the mythological. What exactly propelled Sun Yatsen to act was his experiences as a student in Hong Kong which contrasted with the condition behind home pertaining to areas of education, transport, law and order and the provision of clean drinking water. To begin with, the school he attended in Hong Kong was heavily subsidized by the colonial Britons, it had qualified teachers, textbooks were published in Britain and their operations were overseen by the legislative council and supervised by the government. When he compared this with schools back home rife with corruption his mind was triggered that something is wrong. Sun Yatsen learnt about Darwinism in Hong Kong when he realized that the success of the nation depends on its citizens and he decided to seek ways in which China could be as civilized as their neighbor Hong Kong. He was also dissatisfied with law and order in China where everybody had to be his own policeman but in Hong Kong 50 miles apart, the government there was extremely organized with an organized police force. Hong Kong’s civilization immediately propelled Sun Yatsen into modernizing China and he begun the initiatives by sweeping his own street back home. Today China is planning a centennial celebration to mark its October 1911 revolution, this is likely to win the goodwill of the Taiwanese and other Chinese descendents across the world who are ready to contribute significantly to Chinese transformation, these same celebrations will also run concurrently in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places so as to avoid the fighting for limelight. With all these developments we finds ourselves in the scenario whereby we are wondering what happened, but if we analyze deeper, we realize that in the past Hong Kong’s government had zero tolerance to corruption, but in China it was rife and what the Chinese needed to do to imitate Hong Kong, they had to change their mindsets and ideologies and the only way to achieve this was replacing the then incumbent government which eventually led to the 1911 revolution? According to Sun Yatsen, there are three principles of the people which were vital into transforming China into a modern state. There was the principle of nationalism, this he likened the Chinese nation to a heap of sand and nationalism to cement which would later bind the nation together so that it may stand again on its feet due to the national cohesion that China required to succeed. There were also people’s rights, Chinese government had to rise up and change for the better. Finally there was people’s livelihood, here he reiterated that people should be organized and should socialize in as much way as possible. These principles required leaders who were imaginative and intellectually curious to absorb ideas and inspirations from Western and other colonial societies. Chinese had to accept their culture to be fully appreciated with the community, for instance, the Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) was short lived because they rejected the Chinese cultures and Qing (1644-1368) enjoyed longetivity because they mainly adopted Chinese values which led western historians into believing that this culture based phenomenon among the Chinese contrasts with nation focused modern nationalism hence China was not a modern state because it is inhabited by various racial stock. However China boasted of other foundations such as common language, territory, written script, traditions, values, history, politics, economy e.t.c which the people of China have been sharing since Qin dynasty unified China in 221 BCE and has also managed to unite China. This attests that China has been unified since and nationalism even-though in different form, still nationalism existed. Sun Yatsen constantly preached unity all round by encouraging loyalty to the state in which this loyalty would assist in breaking down its mental “Great wall” of Chinese superiority complex which had also been a bottleneck to its civilization. The Chinese are imperialist, and they must try to acquire an understanding and replicate the good which the Britons have bestowed on human kind. Today the Chinese are showing their public appreciation on the peaceful nature of British transition. The Chinese also feel humiliated by the unequal treaties because they have been taught to think so, but not by the lessons designed to promote Chinese nationalism. When the Chinese signed the treaty of Nanjing they were not aware they were signing a critical sovereignty rights, this led into the ransom of the city of Nanjing and the indemnity of the opium was destroyed and questions rose on how China could survive with all these civilization which indeed worried the Chinese elite that constituted approximately of 5% of its population. This situation exacerbated until Sun Yatsen drove the notion of humiliation in order to promote nationalism in which he explained that China was not a semi-colony but rather a sub-colony of numerous colonial masters. This led the nationalist and the communist propaganda to spread some heightened sense of humiliation among the masses in which the communist managed to win an overwhelming support in 1949. But since 1991 the nationwide Patriotic education Campaign seems to have produced some unforeseen consequence which has portrayed China as a raped woman in various books, novels and songs. As Chinese approach the centenary celebrations in October 2011 will Chinese celebrate the anniversary by distorting history and continual fabrication with a view of perpetuating resentment and hatred in the name of love. While fabrication and distortion cannot be described as a dark side of Chinese civilization in the past present and in future and unless they are eradicated, they will continue impeding on Chinese transformation. China as a nation needs to pay attention to verifiably interpretative history while encouraging understanding and co-operation as advocated by Sun Yatsen in his book: “The international Development of China”. Conclusion With China being attributed to numerous inventions, its successful transformation would re-energize it into its long term prosperity. Ultra-nationalism has being found as Chinese main civilization impediment while the rest of the world is aggressively developing. It is such a similar ultra nationalism that also led Europe and Japan into two world wars. There are contemporary lessons such as USA’s unilateralism with the rest of the world and the likely problems that are bound to arise should USA continue generating the theory of offensive realism being translated into modern policies. In order to ensure Chinese transformation is for the benefit of their society, they have to learn from cases in world history and only select the best for their future economic, social and political prosperity. Bibliography Wang Dong “The discourse of Unequal Treaties in Modern China’, Pacific affairs v,76, no 3 (Fall 2003), pp.399-425: at pp. 419-499 See John Y. Wong, Deadly Dreams: Opium, Imperialism, and the arrow War (1856-1860) in China (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Chapter 3. Item 11 in the educational reports for 1884, by E.J Eitel to the honorable W.H Marsh, Colonial Secretary, 25th February 1885, Presented to the legislative council by command of H.E the governor, n.d Hong Kong Administrative report no. 24 in the year 1885. Sun Yatsen, Minquan Zhuyi, di erjiang (On the Peoples rights, lecture Two), 16th March 1924, in ibid, p.68, lines 3-5. Chinese legislation Archives, Slater to the Chinese minister, 16th December 1896, in Luo Jialun, Shiliao (1935), pp. 129-130. Minzhuyi die r jiang. Nationalism lecture two, 3rd February 1924, Taibei: Jindai Zhonguo chubanshe, 1989, p.15, line 12 –p.16 line 13. Margaret Macmillan, “History-handle with care’, Oxford today, Hillary issues 2010, pp.16-18: at p.17. The article is an essay taken from her new books the uses and abuses of History (Penguin Books, 2008). Read More